Call it polishing the silverware on the Titanic, or fixing your hair as the car rolls off a cliff, or … pick the analogy.
As trivial basketball pursuits go, that about sums up the MAC-SBC Challenge games on Saturday.
The Mid-American Conference is fiddling while Rome burns.
In theory, its poor man’s version of the old ESPN Bracket Busters event is a good idea. The second-year scheduling alliance — which each season matches every MAC team against a pair of like opponents from the Sun Belt Conference — gives its top programs the opportunity to enhance their resumes, including for an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament.
The problem: The MAC men have fallen so far out of the conversation for multiple tourney bids that it would need the Hubble Telescope to see the bubble.
A league that not long ago was knocking hard on March’s door is in a full-blown tailspin.
It has never been rated lower … a year after it had never been rated lower. The MAC is 23rd of 31 conferences in the NET rankings and 24th per KenPom, right between the America East and Atlantic Sun, both traditionally low majors. (The Sun Belt is 20th.)
By the company it keeps, pretty soon the MAC will be playing its championship game on a Tuesday night in a high school-sized gym, not Saturday in an NBA arena.
So … what exactly is the point of shoehorning a random nonconference game into the heart of the league schedule?
Other than it looks good in a news release, I’m not sure.
Neither is Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk.
He likes the first round of the MAC-SBC Challenge in early November. The second round, not so much.
“I just wish our league commissioner would stop trying to do this in February,” Kowalczyk said before the Rockets’ 72-69 win over James Madison. “It makes zero sense. And, in my opinion, it's a big mistake on his part to put our players and all the players in our league in harm's way. It's not right."
Now, I don’t know if I’d go there. (“I’m not responding,” MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said.)
Nor is to suggest the games Saturday did not matter.
Toledo played to win, as did Bowling Green, which beat visiting Coastal Carolina.
I was at Savage, and major credit to the Rockets (15-8), who showed us a lot in rallying from an early 16-point deficit against a very good team. After the Dukes (15-10) hit 13 of their first 14 shots, Toledo flipped its defensive setting from Celebrity All-Star Game to Bad Boys Pistons and grinded out a big victory.
“That was March-level intensity,” Kowalczyk said afterward. “So much for a meaningless game.”
Still, the larger picture remains.
The MAC-SBC Challenge is like straightening the picture frames while the house is ablaze.
How about putting out the fire?
What do I mean? Let’s start with a quick refresher on how we got here.
After enjoying a modern heyday of sorts from 1988 to 2003 — the MAC in that span captured two tourney bids three times and counted eight first-round NBA picks (Dan Majerle, Kenny Battle, Dave Jamerson, Gary Trent, Antonio Daniels, Bonzi Wells, Wally Szczerbiak, and Chris Kaman) — the conference faded from the national hoops picture as its focus shifted to football. (Most credit or blame the addition of football powerhouse Marshall in 1997 for launching a leaguewide arms race.)
Not coincidentally, the league has since produced just four draft picks — Richaun Holmes (BG), Jason Preston (Ohio), Ryan Rollins (Toledo), and Emoni Bates (Eastern Michigan) — all in the second round. The MAC’s at-large drought is now old enough to rent a car (Miami in 1999 is the league’s last non-auto bid).
Sure, the conference has enjoyed its moments.
In 2013, the league office incentivized smarter scheduling — offering financial rewards to schools that played at least 15 home games — and that effort coincided with a modest revival. From ‘15 to ‘21, the MAC was one of the top mid-major leagues, ranking no lower than 13th in the leading metrics.
But …
Those gains have all been lost, and then some.
While there are a few excellent programs — including Toledo, the four-time reigning regular-season champion — the league as a whole remains in a stunning free fall. Incredibly, five teams this season are 309th or lower, per KenPom: Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Bowling Green, Buffalo, and Northern Illinois. There are 364 teams in Division I.
You can point to the NIL and free-agency era, but that’s just an excuse. Roster churn among mid-major programs isn’t unique to the MAC.
For my money, the biggest issue is the lack of sensible investment.
We’ve hammered this the past couple seasons, but too many cash-strapped programs have gone back to the kind of sad-sack schedules that tank the league’s metrics, trading a storm of early losses for paydays that are not reinvested into basketball. Central Michigan played FOUR non-DI teams this season. Northern Illinois played three. (Yes, adding UMass and dropping NIU will help on the hoops side.)
“We need to get our NET ranking back where it was, and that means the bottom teams need to get better,” one league coach told me before the season. “You can't have teams playing four guarantee games [at big schools] and then offset that by playing three non-Division I teams.”
“There are some dang good coaches, but you get what you put into it,” another said. “How a lot of us schedule, it just decimates the league’s numbers.”
What’s the league going to do about it?
For starters, if it’s serious about truly improving the men’s basketball product, it will stop encouraging smarter schedules and begin mandating them.
I asked Steinbrecher if he couldn’t just play bad cop and lay down the law. (Of course, he works for the university presidents, and Inertia might as well be their middle names.)
“I think you put everything on the table,” Steinbrecher said, “and you take a look at all of that and try to make some determinations as to what will assist in raising everyone’s boat.”
“We’re looking at a lot of different things,” he added. “I'm not sure where we'll come out, but I know we'll have some pretty interesting conversations in the postseason as we look into this. The good thing is no one is satisfied.”
Time to stop fiddling as MAC basketball burns.
First Published February 9, 2025, 12:44 a.m.
